314) alone, and divided the Empire between them. They were
Constantine, son of Constantius, the Cæsar, and one Licinius.
After nine years more, Licinius had disappeared, defeated and
put to death, and Constantine (A. D. 323) shared the
sovereignty of Rome with none. In its final stages, the
contest had become, practically, a trial of strength between
expiring Paganism in the Roman world and militant
Christianity, now grown to great strength. The shrewd
adventurer Constantine saw the political importance to which
the Christian Church had risen, and identified himself with it
by a "conversion" which has glorified his name most
undeservedly. If to be a Christian with sincerity is to be a
good man, then Constantine was none; for his life was full of
evil deeds, after he professed the religion of Christ, even
more than before. "He poured out the best and noblest blood in
torrents, more especially of those nearly connected with
himself. ... In a palace which he had made a desert, the
murderer of his father-in-law, his brothers-in-law, his
sister, his wife, his son, and his nephew, must have felt the
stings of remorse, if hypocritical priests and courtier
bishops had not lulled his conscience to rest" (Sismondi).
But the so-called "conversion" of Constantine was an event of
vast import in history. It changed immensely, and with
suddenness, the position, the state, the influence, and very
considerably the character and spirit of the Christian Church.
The hierarchy of the Church became, almost at once, the
greatest power in the Empire, next to the Emperor himself, and
its political associations, which were dangerous from the
beginning, soon proved nearly fatal to its spiritual
integrity. "Both the purity and the freedom of the Church were
in danger of being lost. State and Church were beginning an
amalgamation fraught with peril. The State was becoming a kind
of Church, and the Church a kind of State. The Emperor
preached and summoned councils, called himself, though half in
jest, a 'bishop,' and the bishops had become State officials,
who, like the high dignitaries of the Empire, travelled by the
imperial courier-service, and frequented the ante-chambers of
the palaces in Constantinople." "The Emperor determined what
doctrines were to prevail in the Church, and banished Arius
to-day and Athanasius to-morrow." "The Church was surfeited
with property and privileges. The Emperor, a poor financier,
impoverished the Empire to enrich" it (Uhlhorn). That
Christianity had shared the gain of the Christian Church from
these great changes, is very questionable.
{1008}
By another event of his reign, Constantine marked it in
history with lasting effect. He rebuilt with magnificence the
Greek city of Byzantium on the Bosphorus, transferred to it
his imperial residence, and raised it to a nominal equality
with Rome, but to official find practical superiority, as the
capital of the Empire. The old Rome dwindled in rank and
prestige from that day; the new Rome--the city of Constantine,
or Constantinople--rose to the supreme place in the eyes and
the imaginations of men.
Julian and the Pagan Revival.
That Constantine added the abilities of a statesman to the
unscrupulous cleverness of an adventurer is not to be
disputed; but he failed to give proof of this when he divided
the Empire between his three sons at his death (A. D. 337).
The inevitable civil wars ensued, until, after sixteen years,
one survivor gathered the whole realm under his scepter again.
He (Constantius), who debased and disgraced the Church more
than his father had done, was succeeded (A. D. 361) by his
cousin, Julian, an honest, thoughtful, strong man, who, not
unnaturally, preferred the old pagan Greek philosophy to the
kind of Christianity which he had seen flourishing at the
Byzantine court. He publicly restored the worship of the
ancient gods of Greece and Rome; he excluded Christians from
the schools, and bestowed his favor on those who scorned the
Church; but he entered on no violent persecution. His reign
was brief, lasting only two years. He perished in a hapless
expedition against the Persians, by whom the Empire was now
almost incessantly harassed.
Valentinian and Valens.
His successor, Jovian, whom the army elected, died in seven
months; but Valentinian, another soldier, raised by his
comrades to the throne, reigned vigorously for eleven years.
He associated his brother, Valens, with him in the
sovereignty, assigning the latter to the East, while he took
the administration of the West.
Until the death of Valentinian, in 375, the northern frontiers
of the Empire, along the Rhine and the Danube, were well
defended. Julian had commanded in Gaul, with Paris for his
capital, six years before he became Emperor, and had organized
its defence most effectively. Valentinian maintained the line
with success against the Alemanni; while his lieutenant,
Theodosius, delivered Roman Britain from the ruinous attacks
of the Scots and Picts of its northern region. On the Danube,
there continued to be peace with the Goths, who held back all
other barbarians from that northeastern border.
The Goths in the Empire.
But the death of Valentinian was the beginning of fatal
calamities. His brother, Valens, had none of his capability or
his vigor, and was unequal to such a crisis as now occurred.
The terrible nation of the Huns had entered Europe from the
Asiatic steppes, and the Western Goths, or Visigoths, fled
before them. These fugitives begged to be permitted to cross
the Danube and settle on vacant lands in Mœsia and Thrace.
Valens consented, and the whole Visigothic nation, 200,000
warriors, with their women and children, passed the river (A.
D. 376). It is possible that they might, by fair treatment,
have been converted into loyal citizens, and useful defenders
of the land. But the corrupt officials of the court took
advantage of their dependent state, and wrung extortionate
prices from them for disgusting food, until they rose in
desperation and wasted Thrace with fire and sword. Fresh
bodies of Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths) and other barbarians came
over to join them (A. D. 378); the Roman armies were beaten in
two great battles, and Valens, the Emperor, was slain. The
victorious Goths swept on to the very walls of Constantinople,
which they could not surmount, and the whole open country,
from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, was ravaged by them at
will.
Theodosius.
In the meantime, the western division of the Empire had
passed, on the death of Valentinian, under the nominal rule of
his two young sons, Gratian, aged sixteen, and Valentinian
II., aged four. Gratian had made an attempt to bring help to
his uncle Valens; but the latter fought his fatal battle while
the boy emperor was on the way, and the latter, upon hearing
of it, turned back. Then Gratian performed his one great act.
He sought a colleague, and called to the throne the most
promising young soldier of the day. This was Theodosius, whose
father, Count Theodosius, the deliverer of Britain, had been
put to death by Valens, on some jealous accusation, only three
years before. The new Emperor took the East for his realm, having
Gratian and Valentinian II. for colleagues in the West. He
speedily checked the ravages of the Goths and restored the
confidence of the Roman soldiers. Then he brought diplomacy to
bear upon the dangerous situation, and succeeded in arranging
a peace with the Gothic chieftains, which enlisted them in the
imperial service with forty thousand of their men. But they
retained their distinctive organization, under their own
chiefs, and were called "fœderati," or allies. This concession
of a semi-independence to so great a body of armed barbarians
in the heart of the Empire was a fatal mistake, as was proved
before many years.
For the time being it secured peace, and gave Theodosius
opportunity to attend to other things. The controversies of
the Church were among the subjects of his consideration, and
by taking the side of the Athanasians, whom his predecessor
had persecuted, he gave a final victory to Trinitarianism, in
the Roman world. His reign was signalized, moreover, by the
formal, official abolition of paganism at Rome.
The weak but amiable Gratian, reigning at Paris, lost his
throne and his life, in 383, as the consequence of a revolt
which began in Britain and spread to Gaul. The successful
rebel and usurper, Maximus, seemed so strong that Theodosius
made terms with him, and acknowledged his sovereignty for a
number of years. But, not content with a dominion which
embraced Britain, Gaul and Spain, Maximus sought, after a
time, to add Italy, where the youth, Valentinian II., was
still enthroned (at Milan, not Rome), under the tutelage of
his mother. Valentinian fled to Theodosius; the Eastern
Emperor adopted his cause, and restored him to his throne,
defeating the usurper and putting him to death (A. D. 388).
Four years later Valentinian II. died; another usurper arose,
and again Theodosius (A. D. 394) recovered the throne.
{1009}
Final Division of the Empire.
Theodosius was now alone in the sovereignty. The Empire was
once more, and for the last time, in its full extent, united
under a single lord. It remained so for but a few months. At
the beginning of the year 395, Theodosius died, and his two
weak sons, Arcadius and Honorius, divided the perishing Empire
between them, only to augment, in its more venerable seat, the
distress of the impending fall.
Arcadius, at the age of eighteen, took the government of the
East; Hononus, a child of eleven, gave his name to the
administration of the West. Each emperor was under the
guardianship of a minister chosen by Theodosius before he
died. Rufinus, who held authority at Constantinople, was
worthless in all ways; Stilicho, who held the reins at Milan,
was a Vandal by birth, a soldier and a statesman of vigorous
powers.
Decay of the Western Empire.
The West seemed more fortunate than the East, in this
division; yet the evil days now fast coming near fell
crushingly on the older Rome, while the New Rome lived through
them, and endured for a thousand years. No doubt the Empire
had weakened more on its elder side; had suffered more
exhaustion of vital powers. It had little organic vitality now
left in it. If no swarms of barbaric invaders had been waiting
and watching at its doors, and pressing upon it from every
point with increasing fierceness, it seems probable that it
would have gone to pieces ere long through mere decay. And if,
on the other hand, it could have kept the vigorous life of its
best republican days, it might have defied Teuton and Slav
forever. But all the diseases, political and social, which the
Republic engendered in itself, had been steadily consuming the
state, with their virulence even increased, since it took on the
imperial constitution. All that imperialism did was to gather
waning energies in hand, and make the most of them for
external use. It stopped no decay. The industrial palsy,
induced by an ever-widening system of slave-labor, continued
to spread. Production decreased; the sum of wealth shrunk in
the hands of each succeeding generation; and yet the great
fortunes and great estates grew bigger from age to age. The
gulf between rich and poor opened deeper and wider, and the
bridges once built across it by middle-class thrift were
fallen down. The burden of imperial government had become an
unendurable weight; the provincial municipalities, which had
once been healthy centers of a local political life, were
strangled by the nets of taxation flung over them. Men sought
refuge even in death from the magistracies which made them
responsible to the imperial treasury for revenues which they
could not collect. Population dwindled, year by year.
Recruiting from the body of citizens for the common needs of
the army became more impossible. The state was fully
dependent, at last, on barbaric mercenaries of one tribe for
its defence against barbaric invaders of another; and it was
no longer able, as of old, to impress its savage servitors
with awe of its majesty and its name.
Stilicho and Alaric.
Stilicho, for a time, stoutly breasted the rising flood of
disaster. He checked the Picts and Scots of Northern Britain,
and the Alemanni and their allies on the frontiers of Gaul.
But now there arose again the more dreadful barbarian host
which had footing in the Empire itself, and which Theodosius
had taken into pay. The Visigoths elected a king (A. D. 395),
and were persuaded with ease to carve a kingdom for him out of
the domain which seemed waiting to be snatched from one or
both of the feeble monarchs, who sat in mockery of state at
Constantinople and Milan. Alaric, the new Gothic king, moved
first against the capital on the Bosphorus; but Rufinus
persuaded him to pass on into Greece, where he went pillaging
and destroying for a year. Stilicho, the one manly defender of
the Empire, came over from Italy with an army to oppose him;
but he was stopped on the eve of battle by orders from the
Eastern Court, which sent him back, as an officious meddler.
This act of mischief and malice was the last that Rufinus
could do. He was murdered, soon afterwards, and Arcadius,
being free from his influence, then called upon Stilicho for
help. The latter came once more to deliver Greece, and did so
with success. But Alaric, though expelled from the peninsula,
was neither crushed nor disarmed, and the Eastern Court had
still to make terms with him. It did so for the moment by
conferring on him the government of that part of Illyricum
which the Servia and Bosnia of the present day coincide with,
very nearly. He rested there in peace for four years, and then
(A. D. 400) he called his people to arms again, and led the whole
nation, men, women and children, into Italy. The Emperor,
Honorius, fled from Milan to Ravenna, which, being a safe
shelter behind marshes and streams, became the seat of the
court for years thereafter. Stilicho, stripping Britain and
Gaul of troops, gathered forces with which, at Eastertide in
the year 402, and again in the following year, he defeated the
Goths, and forced them to retreat.
He had scarcely rested from these exertions, when the valiant
Stilicho was called upon to confront a more savage leader,
Radagaisus by name, who came from beyond the lines (A. D.
405), with a vast swarm of mixed warriors from many tribes
pouring after him across the Alps. Again Stilicho, by superior
skill, worsted the invaders, entrapping them in the mountains
near Fiesole (modern Florence), and starving them there till
they yielded themselves to slavery and their chieftain to
death.
This was the last great service to the dying Roman state which
Stilicho was permitted to do. Undermined by the jealousies of
the cowardly court at Ravenna, he seems to have lost suddenly
the power by which he held himself so high. He was accused of
treasonable designs and was seized and instantly executed, by
the Emperor's command.
{1010}
Alaric and his Goths in Rome.
Stilicho dead, there was no one in Italy for Alaric to fear,
and he promptly returned across the Alps, with the nation of
the Visigoths behind him. There was no resistance to his
march, and he advanced straight upon Rome. He did not assail
the walls, but sat down before the gates (A. D. 408), until
the starving citizens paid him a great ransom in silver and
gold and precious spices and silken robes. With this booty he
retired for the winter into Tuscany, where his army was
swelled by thousands of fugitive barbarian slaves, and by
reinforcements of Goths and Huns. From his camp he opened
negotiations with Honorius, demanding the government of
Dalmatia, Venetia and Noricum, with certain subsidies of money
and corn. The contemptible court, skulking at Ravenna, could
neither make war nor make concessions, and it soon exhausted
the patience of the barbarian by its puerilities. He marched
again to Rome (A. D. 409), seized the port of Ostia, with its
supplies of grain, and forced the helpless capital to join him
in proclaiming a rival emperor. The prefect of the city, one
Attalus, accepted the purple at his hands, and played the
puppet for a few months in imperial robes. But the scheme
proved unprofitable, Attalus was deposed, and negotiations
were reopened with Honorius. Their only result was a fresh
provocation which sent Alaric once more against Rome, and this
time with wrath and vengeance in his heart. Then the great,
august capital of the world was entered, through treachery or
by surprise, on the night of the 24th of August, 410, and
suffered all that the lust, the ferocity and the greed of a
barbarous army let loose could inflict on an unresisting city.
It was her first experience of that supreme catastrophe of
war, since Brennus and the Gauls came in; but it was not to be
the last.
From the sack of Rome, Alaric moved southward, intending to
conquer Sicily; but a sudden illness brought his career to an
end.
The Barbarians Swarming in.
The Empire was now like a dying quarry, pulled down by fierce
hunting packs and torn on every side. The Goths were at its
throat; the tribes of Germany--Sueves, Vandals, Burgundians,
Alans--had leaped the Rhine (A. D. 406) and swarmed upon its
flanks, throughout Gaul and Spain. The inrush began after
Stilicho, to defend Italy against Alaric and Radagaisus, had
stripped the frontiers of troops. Sueves, Vandals, and Alans
passed slowly through the provinces, devouring their wealth
and making havoc of their civilization as they went. After
three years, they had reached and surmounted the Pyrenees, and
were spreading the same destruction through Spain.
The confederated tribes of the Franks had already been
admitted as allies into northwestern Gaul, and were settled
there in peace. At first, they stood faithful to the Roman
alliance, and valiantly resisted the new invasion; but its
numbers overpowered them, and their fidelity gave way when
they saw the pillage of the doomed provinces going on. They
presently joined the barbarous mob, and with an energy which
secured the lion's share of plunder and domain.
The Burgundians did not follow the Vandals and Sueves to the
southwest, but took possession of the left bank of the middle
Rhine, whence they gradually spread into western Switzerland
and Savoy, and down the valleys of the Rhone and Saone,
establishing in time an important kingdom, to which they gave
their name.
No help from Ravenna or Rome came to the perishing provincials
of Gaul in the extremity of their distress; but a pretender
arose in Britain, who assumed the imperial title and promised
deliverance. He crossed over to Gaul in 407 and was welcomed
with eagerness, both there and in Spain, to which he advanced.
He gained some success, partly by enlisting and partly by
resisting the invaders; but his career was brief. Other
pretenders appeared in various provinces, of the West; but the
anarchy of the time was too great for any authority,
legitimate or revolutionary, to establish itself.
The Visigoths in Gaul.
And, now, into the tempting country of the afflicted Gauls,
already crowded with rapacious freebooters, the Visigoths made
their way. Their new king, Ataulph, or Adolphus, who succeeded
Alaric, passed into Gaul, but not commissioned, as sometimes
stated, to restore the imperial sovereignty there. He moved
with his nation, as Alaric had moved, and Italy, by his
departure, was relieved; but Narbonne, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and
the Aquitainian country at large, was soon subject to his
command (A. D. 412-419). He passed the Pyrenees and entered
Spain, where an assassin took his life. His successor, Wallia,
drove the Sueves into the mountains and the Vandals into the
South; but did not take possession of the country until a
later time. The Visigoths, returning to Aquitaine, found
there, at last, the kingdom which Alaric set out from the
Danube to seek, and they were established in it with the Roman
Emperor's consent. It was known as the kingdom of Gothia, or
Septimania, but is more commonly called, from its capital, the
kingdom of Toulouse.
The Eastern Empire.
Affairs in the Eastern Empire had never arrived at so
desperate a state as in the West. With the departure of
Alaric, it had been relieved from its most dangerous immediate
foe. There had been tumults, disorders, assassinations, court
conspiracies, fierce religious strifes, and every evidence of
a government with no settled authority and no title to
respect; but yet the Empire stood and was not yet seriously
shaken. In 408 Arcadius died. His death was no loss, though he
left an infant son to take his place; for he also left a
daughter, Pulcheria, who proved to be a woman of rare virtue
and talents, and who reigned in her brother's name.
Aetius and the Huns.
The imbecile Honorius, with whose name the failing sovereignty
of Rome had been so disastrously linked for eight and twenty
rears, died in 423. An infant nephew was his heir, and
Placidia, the mother, ruled at Ravenna for a fourth of a
century, in the name of her child. Her reign was far stronger
than her wretched brother's had been, because she gave loyal
support to a valiant and able man, who stood at her side.
Aetius, her minister, did all, perhaps, that man could do to
hold some parts of Gaul, and to play barbarian against
barbarian--Hun against Goth and Frank--in skilful diplomacy
and courageous war. But nothing that he won was any lasting
gain. In his youth, Aetius had been a hostage in the camps of
both the Goths and the Huns, and had made acquaintances among
the chieftains of both which served his policy many times.
{1011}
He had employed the terrible Huns in the early years of his
ministry, and perhaps they had learned too much of the
weakness of the Roman State. These most fearful of all the
barbarian peoples then surging in Europe had been settled, for
some years, in the region since called Hungary, under Attila,
their most formidable king. He terrorized all the surrounding
lands and exercised a lordship from the Caspian to the Baltic
and the Rhine. The imperial court at the East stooped to pay
him annual tribute for abstaining from the invasion of its
domain. But in 450, when the regent Pulcheria became Empress
of the East, by her brother's death, and married a brave old
soldier, Marcian, in order to give him the governing power, a
new tone was heard in the voice from Constantinople which
answered Attila's demands.
Defeat of Attila.
The Hun then appears to have seen that the sinking Empire of
the West offered a more certain victim to his terrors and his
arms, and he turned them to that side. First forming an
alliance with the Vandals (who had crossed from Spain to
Africa in 429, had ravaged and subdued the Roman provinces,
and had established a kingdom on the Carthaginian ground, with
a naval power in the Carthaginian Sea), Attila led his huge
army into suffering Gaul. There were Ostrogoths, and warriors
from many German tribes, as well as Huns, in the terrific
host; for Attila's arm stretched far, and his subjects were
forced to follow when he led. His coming into Gaul affrighted
Romans and barbarians alike, and united them in a common
defense. Aetius formed an alliance with Theodoric, the
Visigothic king, and their forces were joined by Burgundians
and Franks. They met Attila near Chalons, and there, on a day
in June, A. D. 451, upon the Catalaunian fields, was fought a
battle that is always counted among the few which gave shape
to all subsequent history. The Huns were beaten back, and
Europe was saved from the hopeless night that must have
followed a Tartar conquest in that age.
Attila threatening Rome.